News Archives for November 2009

For your weekend reading we've managed to pull together a few reviews from around the Web. We'll start off with a look at the Unigine 'Heaven' DirectX11 benchmark. For a HTPC that's a bit different you can check out the nMediaPC wooden case. Take a moment to follow the links below for some of the latest reviews.

The iPhone was officially launched in the most populated country on Friday. The phone is being sold through China Unicom, which is currently the second largest carrier in the country. It is likely hoping the iPhone will increase its market share in the coming years. However, the 8GB model will run consumers $732 without a contract. There are plenty of places in the country that sell gray-market models, which will be much cheaper. Another drawback of the Chinese iPhone is the lack of Wi-Fi due to government regulations.

In today's roundup we have a review on the updated TS-419P four-bay NAS server from QNAP aimed at the consumer market. You can also check out reviews on the ASUS Crosshair II Formula motherboard, the Radeon HD5870 graphics card from HIS and more be hitting the links below.

The Motorola Droid, which will be released for Verizon Wireless customers this week, will be coming to Europe in the near future. The phone will be known as the Milestone and will be available to users in Germany and Italy first. It will also make its break into South America in Argentina. The phone will be coming to the Vodafone and O2 networks in these areas. The Milestone will be almost identical to the Droid, except for the support for a maximum 8GB memory card and High Speed Packet Access. The Milestone will also feature the Motonav application for navigation, and not the new Google navigation application.

AMD's upcoming 6-Core processor codenamed Thuban will be released sometime during the first half of 2010. The processor, which could be branded as Phenom II X6, will come equipped for AM3 (but will maintain backwards compatibility with AM2+ and DDR2), will be built on the 45nm fabrication process, and will come with 3MB of L2 Cache (512kB Per Core) and 6MB L3 Cache (Shared). What's nice to know is that, because it will be based of of its server counterparts, it should have similar characteristics, such as the D0 stepping, a TDP near the 115Ws of the server parts which would probably be 125W (or even around 75W for the energy efficient parts) and should be priced around $300-$500. What's new is that it is said to start off clocked at 2.8 GHz, which means that there could be a bit of headroom for some overclocking. Time will tell what AMD holds in store for us, so stay tuned!

Noctua today announced its new NH-D14 premium CPU cooler that builds on the success of its NH-U12P series cooler. The new NH-D14 features a 6-heatpipe, dual radiator design that is designed to provide a high level of cooling performance at low noise levels. Its asymmetrical design provides greater surface area and more clearance towards the RAM slots. The cooler comes equipped with NF-P14 (140mm) and NF-P12 (120mm) fans that in Ultra-Low-Noise mode actually outperforms the NH-U12P at full fan speed. With the SecuFirm2 mounting system, the NH-D14 supports a full range of sockets including LGA1366, LGA1156, LGA775, AM2, AM2+ and AM3. Noctua has announced full availability by mid-November at a suggested retail price of EUR 74.90 / USD 84.90.

In the large market for handheld eBook readers, it seems as if Amazon’s Kindle has always taken the most sales in the selective product lineup. The Nook, by Barnes & Noble, has been a new reader that has stolen the attention of many, with its two LCD display setup. Spring Designs however is filing a lawsuit dealing with the eBook product, stating that B&N were in the talks of a product like the Nook while under NDA agreements and that the company copied Spring Design’s product by offering two LCDs; though each screen has a different function in both of the products. It is not sure which way the lawsuit will go, but with the screens performing different functions in both cases, there does not seem to be too much of a debate, just similar design.

We have a full plate in front of us today so let's dig in. OCC welcomes Driver Heaven as our newest affiliate and the good folks there have a couple of reviews starting with the Corsair TX950W power supply. The AMD Athlon II X4 620 (also reviewed by OCC here) gets paired up with an AM3 785G motherboard from Sapphire over at Bjorn3D so see what it can do. Today's roundup also has a good mix of storage related reviews including a look at the Seagate Barracuda XT 2TB SATA 6 Gbps drive and an article on some of the initial speed bumps encountered on the road to SATA 6G.

Retailer GameStop has announced that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has broken the record for number of game pre-orders. The game will be released on Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and PC a week from today. Gamers who pre-order the game will be entered into a drawing for several great prizes, including a snowmobile and a Hummer H2. The game had been in the news recently with some publicity that wasn't quite as good after Infinity Ward announced that no dedicated servers would be available on PC. Many gamers planned to boycott the game and some even started a petition, but it clearly wasn't enough to get this game off track.

In addition to the reference design 5000-series cards, Sapphire has now released Radeon HD 5870 and HD 5750 cards with its Vapor-X cooling solution (also reviewed by OCC here). While we're on the subject of AMD, the revised Phenom II X4 965 CPU is out with a lower TDP of 125 watts (you can check out the OCC review here). Antec's Skeleton case is certainly an out-of-the-box approach to case design and now you can choose a mini-ITX version (recently reviewed by OCC here). There are more reviews in today's roundup including Sapphire's PURE 1250 PSU (reviewed by OCC here), Asus' P7P55D Deluxe motherboard (also reviewed by OCC here) and the Thermolab BADA CPU cooler (check out the OCC review here). Be sure to read all the reviews using the links below.

John Carmack of id Software has revealed that the company is working on Quake Classic for the iPhone. This comes shortly after the company released Doom for the iPhone, which can be purchased for $6.99. In the Doom port, players have access to 36 levels from the original games, and can also play over the internet. Carmack stated that there will be 2 people at id dedicated to creating software for the iPhone, and that he hopes to get his hands dirty as well. No official release date has been set for the game.

PayPal has announced the PayPal X program, which will provide software developers access to APIs. This will allow PayPal functionality to be built directly into third party applications. Without this ability, users had to be redirected to PayPal to use the service. Built in PayPal functionality could prove extremely useful in apps for mobile phones, and could open up the possibilities of what could be purchased from them. This can be seen as a necessary move in the online payment processing market which PayPal doesn't dominate as it once did. With offerings coming from Google and Amazon, PayPal needs to adapt and get creative to stay ahead.

With SATA 6 Gb/s standard becoming a reality with the standard slowly making its way onto the latest P55 motherboards and the first SATA 6Gb/s drive Seagate's Barracuda XT 2TB hard drive now on the market it may be time to take a look at what the latest technology can offer. For those not wanting to move to a new motherboard there's always the HBA, or host bus adapter, like those offered by High Point Technologies which just announced the Rocket 600 series of add-in cards based on PCI-Express 2.0 technology. The cards offer 500MB/s of throughput that will allow you to get the most out of your solid state drives and traditional hard drives up to 2TB. High Point is telling us the MSRP for the Rocket 620 is $69.99 and the Rocket 622 is $79.99 and will begin shipping to channel partners this week with retail availability expected soon afterward.

AMD released a revised version of its Phenom II X4 965 processor (see the OCC review here) and we managed to snag several reviews from around the web. Also included in today's roundup are several videocards including the Sparkle GeForce GTX 260, the Gigabyte GeForce GT220 and a pair of AMD Radeon cards. Be sure to check out the rest of what the Web has to offer by using the links below.

PC gamers already had enough to be mad about with Modern Warfare 2 and the lack of dedicated servers, but it appears to be worse. An online chat with Infinity Ward representatives revealed that gamers may have more to gripe about. The maximum number of players per game will be set at 18, and the ability to lean has also been removed. Both of these were done to prevent game balance from being ruined. Also removed from this game is the ability to use console commands to modify game settings, or even record your gameplay. In the new matchmaking system, users also won't be able to kick problem users or those that are hacking. In addition, there is a five second delay any time the host needs to change. The most interesting aspect in my opinion is that Infinity Ward admitted that it is basically a direct port from the console. The lone exception is that “PC has custom stuff like mouse control, text chat in game, and graphics settings.” Its not all bad PC gamers, at least you can still use a mouse.

With Western Digital providing many portable hard drives as well as performance and green drives for desktops, as a company it has not yet had a SAS drive for the enterprise market. That is all changing though, with the unveiling of the first SAS hard drive from Western Digital, offering plenty of features with it. Along with the sequential data rate of 128MB/s, the platter can spin up to 10,000 RPM and offers the adoption of the 3Gb/s as well as the 6Gb/s interface, and also touts a 300GB storage capacity in a 2.5-inch form factor. Mainly, the new WD S25 drive is promoted to very large businesses looking for large storage arrays in an enterprise type market. The drive is already available to a few select OEMs, but more are being added shortly for more availability.

Today's roundup has enough content to keep you busy for a while so you can put off doing whatever it is that you're supposed to be working on for a bit longer. FrostyTech posted up an article looking at the insides of modern heatpipes to expose the different types of wick structures employed by cooler makers. Motorola's Droid smartphone is officially available at Verizon today and we get an in-depth hands-on look at the first phone running the Android 2.0 operating system. We also offer you another look at the AMD Phenom II X4 965 processor (also reviewed by OCC here). You can follow the links below to check out the rest of today's reviews.

Toshiba has unveiled the world's largest 1.8" HDD. The new drive, MK3233GSG runs at 5400RPM, features a 16MB buffer and most importantly has a 320GB capacity. The new drive has faster data transfer rates, less noise while seeking data (19dB) and is 19% more efficient energy-wise than Toshiba's previous series of 1.8" drives. The drive uses a SATA 3.0Gbps interface and is intended for use in UMPCs and netbooks. Toshiba will begin mass production of the MK3233GSG in December, although the price of the lilliputian HDD has not yet been announced.

Initial sales of Windows 7 were 234% higher than Vista's first few days of sales in the US, according to market research firm NPD Group. Although Windows 7 sales were up by over 200%, revenue growth was 82% up over Vista. The smaller growth of revenue has been attributed to early discounts for pre-orders and not enough advertising for the high-end "Ultimate" version of Windows 7. Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis at NPD said that “Microsoft’s program of early low-cost pre-sales, high visibility marketing, and aggressive deals helped make the Windows 7 software launch successful. In a slow environment for packaged software Windows 7 brought a large number of customers into the software aisles.” The top-selling SKUs of Windows 7 were Home Premium Upgrade, Pro Upgrade and Home Premium Family Pack (3 User) Upgrade at an average selling price of US$76, US$147 and US$149 respectively. It seems that Windows 7 has brought in all the customers wanting a fresh start with Windows and what's more, the attractive prices make it even harder to resist Microsoft's sleeker, faster and more minimalist OS.

As you might or might not already know, ATI plan to release a 2GB variant of their already popular Radeon HD 5870. What separates this card though from its siblings is that it comes with six Mini Display Port outputs, which shows that this card is specialised for multi-monitor setups. The new card also requires an 8-Pin and 6-Pin power connector instead of two 6-Pin connectors like the Radeon HD 5870 1GB variant. Apart from the ATI Eyefinity Technology and having no back plate, the cards specifications remain the same with 1600 Stream processors, a core clock of 850MHz and a 4800MHz effective memory clock. Price and release date has not been announced, neither has whether ATI's AIB Partners will be branding and selling the 2GB variant, or if it will only be only available from ATI themselves.

Gamers have a lot to complain about when it comes to Modern Warfare 2, but that doesn't justify breaking the law. Two friends who stole several Xbox 360 bundles containing the game thought it would be a good idea to sell them on Craigslist before the game was released. Activision got wind of the ad, and contracted a private investigator. The two sellers were turned over to the loss prevention staff at the retailer where one of them worked. However, one of the systems was sold to an 18 year old from Miami who intended to release the game online and sell illegal copies in his hometown. Police set up a sting operation and arrested the pirate, who is currently incarcerated. The game has still found its way to file sharing sites, and sales of the game may suffer as a result.

On the heels of the launch of the Motorola Droid on the Verizon network, new iPhone rumors have sprung up. The rumored new iPhone will be a “world mode” phone, and would be compatible with both GSM/UMTS and CDMA. This would be important for several reasons, and Apple would be able to sell one phone to all carriers. The current iPhone is only compatible with AT&T and T-Mobile in the United States, while CDMA technology would allow Verizon and Sprint customers access to the phone. However, the phone would also feature a 2.8 inch touch screen, which is significantly smaller than the current model.

Seagate is the first out with a SATA 6Gb/s drive and we get a chance to check out the latest drive along with one of its Savvio 15k.2 SAS drives. There are plenty more reviews for you to check out this weekend so hit the links below for some great reading.

PowerColor has just announced the SCS3 HD5750, the first passive cooling DX11 card. It will run at stock speeds, being 700MHz and 4600MHz for the GPU and memory respectively while also having all the features of the other cards, but instead of the typical fan cooler, it will have a 4-heatpipe passive cooling solution providing absolute silence. With its silence and good performance, the SCS3 HD5750 is a card to have in mind for silent computing and especially for the use in an HTPC. We can only expect similar solutions for its bigger sister, the HD5770, in the near future. The card is set to be launched in late November with a price around the 150 dollar mark.

We kick off the new week with a roundup rich in videocard reviews that includes a pair of reviews on the HIS HD 4890, another duo that cover the Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 1GB Vapor-X (also reviewed by OCC here) and a lone review on the Gigabyte GeForce 210. There is also coverage of Gigabyte's TweaKING overclocking event recently held in Paris and more.

iPhone users that have jailbroken their iPhones have come under attack from a new worm. The worm seems to not have malicious intentions, and simply changes the background of the phone to a picture of Rick Astley. The affected phones all have something in common other than being jailbroken, default passwords. Neglecting to change the default password provides one of the easiest targets for hackers. The worm spreads between phones that have an SSH port open, and is able to spread itself from phone to phone. It appears that it is only a matter of time before someone decides to take advantage of this for personal gain instead of laughs.

Intel is supposedly planning on a "fast transition" to Pine Trail, the next generation Atom platform according to documents seen by X-bit labs. The current N270 and N280 Atom CPUs have been ubiquitous in netbooks and nettops for a while now, and while capable for most basic tasks a lot will welcome an update to the platform that should see improvements to the already meagre power consumption, as well as hopefully some performance improvements for tasks that current netbooks struggle with. As Intel is also pushing its CULV platform I wouldn't expect a night and day difference between the two, but anything extra would be welcomed. The new Atom processor will take on the main functions of the Pine Trail platform, with an integrated graphics core, built in DD2 memory controller, a Broadcom video decoding processor and improved core-logic. The, Atom N450, D510 (dual-core) and D410 all come in with a clockspeed of 1.66GHz and 512KB cache per core (so 1MB on the D510). Intel is expected to reveal more details about the platform on December 21st, with systems launching on January 4th ready for manufacturers to show them off at CES a few days later.

As some of you might know by now there has been some issues regarding the LGA-1156 Foxconn socket, but it looks like it's getting worse. Foxconn said they corrected the cause of the problems back in May, however even with the new revision of the socket the number of damaged motherboards and processors keeps growing. At first the issue was only reported by users with extreme overclocking and after demanding benchmarking runs, but now it's starting to appear with average overclock settings and on a higher number of motherboard models. There are already full stocks of motherboards on the market that use the socket behind this problem, with the highest number of them being from Gigabyte and ASUS (a recent AnandTech review suggests both may be considering switching socket providers on some boards at least). Some brands, including EVGA and MSI have suspended the use of Foxconn and are now using TYCO AMP and LOTES parts for their P55 motherboards. The problem is apparently caused by bad contact between some of the CPU pins and the socket eventually leading to the death of both of them. Let's hope Foxconn gets over this issue soon.

Nokia has issued a recall for several phone charger models manufactured by BYD, one of its Chinese third-party suppliers. The reason for the recall is that Nokia has determined that the plastic covers on the chargers could potetnially come loose and separate, exposing the electronics within. If a customer happened to touch certain components while the charger was plugged into a live socket, it could result in electrocution. The company is therefore offering an exchange program for the models affected, which were sold largely in North America and Europe. If you wish to check your own charger, then you can refer to Nokia's exchange program website, which shows that the model numbers affected are AC-3U and AC-3E (those manufactured by BYD between June 15th and August 9th, 2009), along with AC-4U (those manufactured by BYD between April 13th and October 25th, 2009). If you bought a charger before those dates, or it wasn't made by BYD, then there is no need to worry. Nokia also notes that no known cases of injury related to the problem have been reported.

With the LGA-1366 socket aiming to have a considerable amount of life left in it, what with the six-core Intel Core i9 chips on the horizon, it makes sense that manufacturers will be starting to add features to their X58 based boards that have been introduced since their initial arrival. Gigabyte is looking to be first to have a refreshed board to market with its X58A-UD7, which includes the addition of a NEC USB 3.0 controller and a Marvell SE9128 to take care of the SATA 3.0 (6Gb/s) duties. That gives the board 10 SATA ports in total, with six of them hooked up to the Intel ICH10R and four to the new Marvell controller, while the NEC USB controller will give you three powered USB 3.0 ports. I'm sure we can expect to see other manufacturers following suit soon.

NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang is never one to shy awake from saying what he thinks. When asked by cnet about rumours that the company may be developing an x86 compatible chip, the response was a resounding "No". Haung clearly stated that NVIDIA's focus was on visual and parallel computing, as well as aiming to get its GPUs into a diverse array of platforms, such as the low power devices which use the Tegra chip (say the Zune HD). While denials such as this may seem pretty clear cut (and they could be), NVIDIA has also never been afraid to play the PR game, and some still believe that it may venture into the x86 marketplace if that is what is required to preserve revenues from other product lines. Huang also took the opportunity to rule out the use of AMD spin-off Globalfoundries for the production of NVIDIA parts should capacity at its current partner TSMC come up short.

Looking around the Web today we came up with several reviews on P55 chipset motherboards including the ASUS P7P55D Deluxe (reviewed by OCC here). The single videocard in the collection today covers the Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X card (also reviewed by OCC here). Take a moment to check out all the reviews by following the links below.

Research in Motion, makers of the popular Blackberry devices, will be aiding developers of apps for its phones. The aid will come in the form of helping developers include ads in their apps, allowing them to increase their revenue. Additionally, RIM will assist developers in accepting payments for premium content through its app store. By helping developers, RIM hopes to attract more developers to create apps, hoping to compete with the popular App Store from Apple. Apple and other smartphone manufacturers have been taking a bite out of the market that the Blackberry has long dominated, and improved app offerings could help RIM gain some market share back.

The Radeon HD 5970 will be the new flagship GPU coming from ATI. They have decided to drop the X2 moniker, and instead of branding their dual-GPU cards as X2 cards, they will be branded within the Radeon HD 5900 series. Officially, we know that the 5970 will be two 5870’s, but we are yet to know if there will officially be a 5950 (two 5850’s). The NDA lifts on the 16th of November, but it is not known if this will be the official date, but we can hope that it is. The specifications of the 5970 are as follows: Built on the 40 nm fabrication process, 334 mm² die size, 2154M transistors and PCI Express 2.1 X16 Interface. From various images leaked from the internet we can see that it is in fact two 5870 GPUs on a single PCB, destroying the hope of having a MCM GPU. This means that there will be two separate GPU cores clocked at 750 MHz, 2x 1600 Stream Processors, 2x 256-Bit Bus Widths (512-Bit Total), 2x Memory Sizes of 1024 MB with 1000 MHz clocks (4000 MHz effective), with support for DirectX 11 and Shader Model 5.0. Price hasn’t been announced, although due to stock shortages because of problems with TSMC and lack of competition, it could come in around $500+.

After announcing the acquisition of Playfish, creator of social networking games for $300m yesterday, Electronic Arts is now saying that it will also be cutting around 1,500 jobs in an effort to cut costs. EA has not yet confirmed where the job losses will occur, but it will likely be over a range of the company's studios. EA reported a $391m net loss for the third quarter this year, which was up from a loss of $310m for the same period last year. Those sort of figures will have likely prompted the latest round of lay-offs (EA had already shed 1,100 jobs this year before this announcement). The reductions in staff numbers are expected to save around $100m a year, though it may also lead to some projects that are currently in development to be cancelled as EA narrows its focus to more profitable titles.

You can join in a discussion with our members on this news in our forums.

Razer's latest mouse offering, the Abyssus does away with the multitude of extra buttons that can be found on other mice (the company's own Naga MMO mouse being a good example of that). Instead you get a simple three button configuration (though as this is Razer, these are programmable 'Hyperresponse' buttons) on a design built around a 3500dpi 3.5G infrared sensor. You also get 2 hardware toggles on the underside of the mouse, used to switch between 450/1800/3500dpi or to adjust the polling rate (125/1000Hz). The idea behind it is to provide a straight forward gaming grade mouse that doesn't come with the price premium of the company's top end products. You can check out further details and pre-order an Abyssus for $49.99 at razerzone.com.

According to DRAM Exchange there has been a raise of about 14% in DDR2 prices in the first part of November alone. The high demand of DDR2 memory at the moment (probably caused by the large number of users upgrading their systems to run Windows 7 smoothly) is surpassing the production and it looks like it will stay like that for some time, eventually making DDR2 prices even higher. With DDR3 starting to appear even in low/mid-range OEM machines and manufacturers also aiming more and more for the replacing of DDR2, this looks like the perfect time for DDR3 to take over the market, however this is bad news for those who are not planning to move into DDR3 platforms any time soon since they will have to pay much more for their memory than they have enjoyed previously.

Matrox has just announced the newest addition to their video card line-up, the M9188 PCIe x16 Octal graphics card. The card is labeled as Octal because it can drive 8 displays at once. Yes, I said 8 diplays. The card has 2GB of memory and can run each display at up to 2560x1600 for Display Port monitors or up to 1920x1200 for DVI Single-Link monitors. It is a single-slot design so that it will not block other slots on the motherboard and allows room for additional cards. Two of these cards can be combined in one system to drive a total of 16 displays! The connected displays may be arranged in two ways: One arrangement is a single desktop stretched across all connected displays, while another option provides an independent desktop on each. This allows for either more space for one program, or multiple desktops to display multiple programs at once. Two keys areas that Matrox mentions the card would be beneficial in are electric grid management and train dispatch management. Both of these areas require displaying large visualizations of the grid or train tracks to effectively manage them. The M9188 will retail for $1995 and supports Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003/2008, and Linux.

If $1995 is too much or you only need to drive 2 monitors, Matrox is offering the M9128 LP PCIe x16 that can support 2 monitors. This card will retail for $259.

Contests are always fun and PowerColor is partnering AMD, Crucial, Gigabyte, NewEgg.com, Plextor, ThermalTake and Western Digital to bring a little excitement, along with some prizes, into your life. Operation Media Scout is a 2-week contest with daily prizes being awarded to participants. At the conclusion, there will be a grand prize drawing for a media PC valued at $1,000 built with components from the listed partners.

Beginning 11/9/2009 through 11/23/2009, PowerColor will be giving away a prize every day to people who prove they can complete the tasks posted in the PowerColor forum, Facebook and Twitter pages. For more information and complete rules, visit the Operation Media Scout page.

Noctua's NH-U9B cooler is designed for smaller cases such as those used in HTPC applications. The company has announced a special edition called the NH-U9B SE2 and added a second NF-B9 92mm fan to the package along with support for LGA1156 as well as LGA1366 sockets using Noctua's SecuFirm2 multi-socket mounting system making it compatible Intel's latest Core i7 and Core i5 processors as well as AMD AM2, AM2+ and AM3 motherboards. With the addition of the second fan, you can set the fans up for maximum cooling or ultra-quiet mode using the included Low-Noise and Ultra-Low-Noise adapters. Noctua has said the coolers will be available shortly at a recommended retail price of EUR 46.90 / USD 54.90.

In Win has a pair of relatively recent additions to it PC chassis product lineup with the FANQUA and Maelstrom cases. The FANQUA is a mid-tower case designed to incorporate the important features of Fan, Airflow, Neat, Quality, User friendly and Affordable which is how they came up with the name. The case features a 22cm side fan and mesh filters to trap dust before it enters the case. The Fanqua also features a tool-free design and lots of cable management clips on the inside.

The Maelstrom case has been out for a little over a month and it is a full-tower design with a black interior that supports motherboards from Micro-ATX to Extended-ATX. The Maelstrom supports up to ten front, side, and top 12cm fans along with retaining holes at the rear for water cooling. The case uses a bottom-mounted PSU design with dedicated ventilation holes to further enhance cooling performance.

Both cases can be found on-line right now with the Fanqua averaging around $70-$80US and the Maelstrom hitting the $100-$120US range.

Infinity Ward certainly raised the ire of some PC gamers with its decision to not provide dedicated servers for Modern Warfare 2 but that hasn't seemed to slow sales too much according to news reports. Released for consoles and PC this week, today's roundup has a pair of reviews covering graphics performance on the PC as well as a review looking at game play on the Xbox 360 and PS3. While we're on the subject of games, we also turned up a pair of reviews looking at Need for Speed: Shift. NZXT has released several cases that not only offer a departure from the run of the mill black box, but are also attractively priced. Two of those cases, the NZXT M59 (you can read the OCC review here) and the NZXT Lexa S (also reviewed by OCC here) are covered in today's roundup.

Microsoft has confirmed that it has banned a "small percentage" of Xbox Live players who have been found to have modified consoles, either by adding mod chips although potentially even for using non-Xbox hard drives. It is thought that anywhere between 600,000 and 1 million users could be affected by the most recent round of bans, which seems to be part of an annual check for modified consoles that violate Xbox Live's terms of use. While Microsoft hasn't divulged how it identifies affected consoles (and why would they), it has said that all banned consoles have been verified to be in violation of the terms of use of the service. So, some of those who have rushed out to buy Modern Warfare 2 expecting to play online may be greeted with disappointment today. It is hard to see how these users have much legitimate cause for complaint, particularly those who admit to having saved large amounts of money by opting for pirated games.

Of course, being banned from Xbox Live doesn't render a console completely useless, and it will continue to work normally offline. But with a large part of many games being the online experience, those banned from the service will be missing out on a lot of the action, leaving them with the decision of whether to purchase a new console or not. It certainly isn't surprising to see MS cracking down on modified consoles, with game industry body the ELSPA (Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers' Association) claiming copying and other illegal activities cost the industry more than £750m (approx $1.2bn) every year.

DFI recently announced the first P55 chipset mITX motherboard, the Lanparty MI-P55-T36. While it is a Mini ITX motherboard the quality is not going to be mini, at all. While some users may not have enough expansion slots to use on this motherboard as they would like to, most of us could use it as our regular motherboard since it has all we need to make a good use of our computer. It is also important to note that this motherboard uses a LOTES socket. While the launch is set to be really soon there are still no details about the price. Drop a Core i5 processor into the MI-P55-T36, plus a 5750 and you have a pretty good HTPC. For some hardcore modders this is also the opportunity to add two powerful systems in just one case!

OCZ is planning to begin using SandForce SSD Processors in all of its SSDs sometime in the near future. OCZ has been mentioning this for quite some time, but has not begun using the new SSD processors just yet. More details about the transition are due to be released in period leading up to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January. The new processors are the SF-1200 and the SF-1500, geared for consumers and enerpises respectively. Both chips are marked as offering up to 260MB/s read and write speeds. OCZ says various combinations of the SF-1200 and SF-1500 SSD processors, single- (SLC) and multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory, and 3Gb/s SATA and 6Gb/s SAS connections will be available in capacities ranging from 50GB to 400GB. The new processors offer many benefits: DuraWrite to extend the life of SSDs, Intelligent Block Management and Wear Leveling, Intelligent Read Management, Intelligent "Recycling" (free space management), RAISE (Redundant Array of Independent Silicon Elements), and best-in-class ECC protection to protect data and extend drive life. No information has been provided as to availability dates or pricing of the new drives, look for more information as CES draws closer.

Keeping things cool is sometimes a challenge especially if you need to balance in the need for quiet operation or have a laptop that needs help to keep from getting too toasty. That's why there are cooling products like the NZXT Sentry 2 touchscreen fan controller (check out the OCC review here) and the Thermaltake Massive23 ST notebook cooler (also reviewed by OCC here). Lucid's Hydra 200 multi-GPU chip for balancing graphics load over disparate GPUs gets tested and we have three different articles about performance in today's roundup. We also have several other pairs of reviews covering power supplies, headsets and cases, including the Cooler Master Storm Sniper Black Edition (just reviewed by OCC here) so enjoy your reading today.

“Intel Corporation and Advanced Micro Devices today announced a comprehensive agreement to end all outstanding legal disputes between the companies, including antitrust litigation and patent cross license disputes.” That’s what Intel released to the press early this morning and it does come as quite a surprise. AMD and Intel have both been known to have a lot of disputes in the past, which have lead to numeral court cases, and Intel being fined by both the European Union and United States regulators for unlawful trade practices. So what does this mean? It means that AMD and Intel will put down all the disputes they have had, a new 5 year cross licence will be made, AMD will drop all of its court cases against Intel and Intel will pay $1.25 Billion to AMD. I personally am glad that all disputes have been settled and that now both companies will be able to hopefully leave each other in peace for the lawful side of things and they will concentrate on “product innovation and development.” As stated in a joint statement by AMD and Intel.

AMD revealed two new x86 processors to be released sometime in 2011 on Wednesday. Both chips will be made using a 32nm process, with each directed at a specific market. The Bobcat is aimed at mobile and System on a Chip applications, and is intended to compete with the Atom and Via Nano. AMD is aiming for the processor to take less than 1W of power, with higher end chips below the 2.5W range. The Bobcat will use at most 50% of the silicon of current generation processors, and is written in high level code. The design is then created by an automation tool, removing much of the legwork at the transistor level and allowing for easier integration with other components.

The second new chip is code named Bulldozer and is targeted at desktop and server markets. The processor will be a “dual core” offering with the cores sharing fetch and decode units, along with a floating point unit. This allows the chip to appear as one core to the OS, which should allow the hardware to assign tasks to either processor at its discretion.

As many of you probably already know, Infinity Ward released Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on November 10, 2009, or 11-10-09. It had pre-orders waiting to be fulfilled and others waiting in lines at stores to try and get their hands on a copy as quickly as possible. The game was long awaited and had followers very excited. Proof of this excitement and large following are shown by the fact that the game has achieved the status of largest entertainment launch ever. This status was previously held by Rockstar North's Grand Theft Auto IV which sold 3.6 million copies in the first 24 hours after release. Those copies brought in $310 million in worldwide sales figures. As astounding as those figures are, Modern Warefare 2 topped those pretty well: 4.7 million copies sold in the first 24 hours after release, 1.1 million more than GTA IV, and $310 million in revenue...in the United States and Britain alone. GTA IV brought in a revenue of $310 million worldwide, but Modern Warefare 2 brought in the same in the U.S. and Britain alone! The game appears to be a huge success despite many of the concerns voiced about not providing dedicated servers for the PC version and limiting maps to 18 players.